Celebrated American YA author Walter Dean Myers, who wrote more than a hundred
books including Monster and Lockdown, has died

Walter Dean Myers, the author of Monster, My Dead Brother and Lockdown, has died at the age of 76.

Myers, who was born in Martinsburg, West Virginia on August 12, 1937, wrote more than 110 books and won almost every major award in the field of children’s literature in America.

His novel Hoops, about a young basketball player called Lonnie overcoming obstacles, was made into a film. Myers was a three-time National Book Award nominee, received five Coretta Scott King awards for African-American fiction and from 2012 to 2013 served as national ambassador for young people’s literature, a position created in part by the Library of Congress. He was also a tireless champion of literacy and education.

His final novel called On a Clear Day, about teenagers in 2035 taking on a terrifying power elite, is scheduled for publication in September.

“He wrote with heart and he spoke to teens in a language they understood,” said Susan Katz, president of HarperCollins Children’s Books, in a statement.

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Walter Dean Myers' book On a Clear Day will be published in September 2015

Myers, who stuttered as a child, had troubled times as a youngster and dropped out of high school. In his memoir Bad Boy, he recalled: "There were two very distinct voices going on in my head and I moved easily between them. One had to do with sports, street life and establishing myself as a male. The other voice was increasingly dealing with the vocabulary of literature." He later told AP: "I know what falling off the cliff means. I know from being considered a very bright kid to being considered like a moron and dropping out of school."

It helped make him an empathetic writer and his books are hugely popular with teenage boys as well as girls. His novels were usually narrated by youngsters who were trying to make the right choices under difficult circumstances. In The Beast, for example, a student has to decide what to do about a girlfriend who is hooked on drugs.

Walter Milton Myers was one of five siblings and his mother died when he was 18 months old. He was raised in a Harlem foster home by Herbert, a janitor, and Florence Dean, a cleaning woman. In honour of them, he took the pen name Walter Dean Myers. Before becoming a writer, he worked in a factory, served in the army and was a messenger on Wall Street. Reading James Baldwin inspired him to be a writer and he made his start writing sports reports. He ended up writing picture books, YA novels, essays, criticism and poetry.

In March 2014, he wrote a comment piece for The New York Times with the headline, "Where Are the People of Colour in Children’s Books?” in which he said: "Books transmit values. They explore our common humanity. What is the message when some children are not represented in those books? Where are the future white personnel managers going to get their ideas of people of colour? Where are the future white loan officers and future white politicians going to get their knowledge of people of colour? Where are black children going to get a sense of who they are and what they can be?”

Myers, a longtime resident of Jersey City, died on June 25 at Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan after a brief illness. He is survived by his wife, Constance, and two sons. A daughter, Karen, died earlier.